When too much politics is barely enough.

"And now, our Canberra correspondent with breaking news"

Last night I had a dream where I was trying to explain preferential voting to a group of overseas visitors.

Maybe I should ease up on the Federal election a bit.

Mind you, with the rubbish the media is spouting as political coverage, that’s not much of a sacrifice.

It’s getting to the stage where I’d get more sense from interviewing passing lunatics in the street.

Me: “Good morning sir, I wonder if you’d care to give me your opinion on the Federal election?”

Passing lunatic: “Fromage! Chickens! The Kaiser is stealing my string!”

Me: “I’m very sorry; I didn’t recognise you Mr Bolt. A very good day to you sir.”

Why I won't be voting Green.

" Yeah, yeah, I'm very concerned about global warming"

The other day I ran into the local Green candidate, handing out material outside my local supermarket*, which lead in turn to the following exchange.

Green candidate: “Hello there, interested in voting Green?”

Me: “Not really, thanks.”

Green candidate (surprised): “Why not?”

Me: “I’ve met too many of them.”

Which lead in turn to a polite, short, discussion about my aversion to most things Green, which in turn lead to me thinking why so many passionate, polite, well-educated Greens voters give me the flying shits.

In part, I think, it’s because so many of them have that air of deeply self satisfied, self-righteousness that reminds me of members of a fundamental religion. If you disagree with them, then you’re not just wrong; you’re evil, brainwashed, a spawn of darkness. I had a blazing row with an old mate of mine because I refused to regard Victoria’s desalination plant as “sinister conspiracy to privatize our water”**.

It’s probably just as well that I didn’t tell her that, in my opinion, organic food was over-priced crap, with no good evidence that it’s better for either you or the environment.

The other thing that shits me about the Green is their immovable conviction that they’re somehow spin-free “brave truth tellers”.

Are they bollocks!

In my experience, the Greens are the biggest spin-merchants around – they’re just better at looking sincere while they do it.

Oh and they voted with the Tories on the Government’s ETS legislation in the Senate.

That should just about do it.

* Although, given my local shopping centre does attract rather more than its fair share of “colourful local identities”, I have to salute her courage.

** Alcohol may have also been involved.

Snack sized PSF

I have been busy, you know!

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou are gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

I realise I've been very slack, Poetry Slam Friday wise, leaving all the heavy lifting to Squib.

But in my defence, I'm a lazy, lazy man.

Gay zombie porn? Why of course!

Not a gay zombie.

In what I’m sure will come as a bitter blow to – say - Desci, the Australian censor has banned a work described as ''gay zombie porn'' from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, the first time this has happened in seven years.

The Age notes;

Festival director Richard Moore received a letter yesterday from the Film Classification Board director Donald McDonald, stating that L.A. Zombie, the latest offering from Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce, could not be screened as it would in his opinion be refused classification.

Mr LaBruce (possibly not his birth name) notes

In a media release marking the start of production on L.A. Zombies in May last year, LaBruce said: ''Not unpretentiously, I consider myself not so much a pornographer, as an artist who works in porn.''

Indeed not, Mr LaBruce. In no way could this statement be considered pretentious.

The paper also comments;

There are full-frontal nude scenes and erect penises. The zombies have cucumber-shaped penises which are clearly prosthetic.

I’m pretty much an absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech and I can’t really see a reason why a film, clearly advertised as containing offensive content, should be banned but based on the information supplied thus far; I’ll probably give L.A. Zombie a miss.

On a happier note, Festival director Richard Moore has effectively told tiresome prick Ken Loach to “shove his latest dirge up his clacker”.

Good man.

Hawke! The tele-movie!

Trotsky the cat asks himself "why am I watching this rubbish"?

Old-style narcissist meets new-age narcissist.

Narcissism ensues.

Also; famous Australians playing famous Australian politicians!

Also; it was rubbish!

Paul Keating was portrayed as a pantomime villain and complete dick-biscuit throughout. At times, it was though we were all encouraged to shout “look out Bob – he’s behind you!”

“Creative” types constantly whinge that there’s not enough Australian content on the tellie and that “we aren’t telling our own stories”.

On the basis of Hawke, that’s probably for the best.

Moving right along from moss to grass

I would make a good badge

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from
offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Go the blood nut!

" Thanks for inviting me today Kerry"

Hot tip is that Jules will announce the date of the 2010 Federal election tomorrow (Friday 16th).

Most likely date is last August - probably 28th.

The Party's election slogan will be

That Abbott, he's a shifty cunt isn't he?*.

* Although that may change after the focus groups.**

** But not any focus group I'm a member of.

EXTREME Narnia

Edmund discovers that Turkish Delight tastes like soap

My dad made a Narnia lamp but it stopped working ten minutes before the party. That's OK though because I photoshopped a glow into the lamp


There was a wardrobe



The invitations were wardrobes



The party favours were wardrobes. Because I am deranged, I made individual Narnia figures from wooden pegs. This is the Mr Tumnus batch





There was a scavenger hunt. Guests had to take all items to BigSquib who was dressed as Jadis and she handed out brown paper Mr Tumnus parcel prizes



This is one of the snowflake luminaries (with battery tealights) I made and BigSquib's crown. Also, some decorations






Food included deer cupcakes and white choc crackles

The piece de resistance... an ice castle cake

Guests decorated shields and BigSquib gave them fencing lessons with balloon swords

Handmade snowballs and two bags of insta-snow

The galleon in our backyard was renamed Dawntreader

Snowflake pinata filled with Turkish Delights, Raffaellos, chocolates, and paper snowflakes. There was also snowflake face painting

BigSquib/Jadis read the kids a book about Wilson Bentley, a guy who spent his life photographing snowflakes under a microscope. She left out the bit where Bentley died of pneumonia and handed around another book with photos of real snowflakes for everyone to look at

Playlist: Cold Acre by Augie March, Cold Wind by Arcade Fire, Winter for a Year by Arcade Fire, Turkish Delight by David Crowder Band, Let is Snow by Dean Martin, Like a Lion by the Decemberists, Cold Day in July by Dixie Chicks, Cold as Ice by Foreigner, White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes, My Favourite Things by Julie Andrews, Under Ice by Kate Bush, Frozen by Madonna, Cold December by Matt Costa, Arctic World by Midnight Oil, Mr Tumnus lullaby from Narnia soundtrack, 15 Feet of Pure White Snow by Nick, Winter Wonderland by Pat Boone, Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel, Ice Queen by Stranglers, California Dreamin' by Mamas and Papas, Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, Snowman by XTC, Always Winter but Never Christmas by XTC

OK, this is the last time, I promise.

Melba wonders why I keep banging on about the dangers of “alternative medicine” and this is why.

The ABC report notes

The New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) has compiled a damning report into Australia's most prominent anti-vaccination group, the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN).

The HCCC accuses the AVN of providing inaccurate and misleading information and selectively quoting research out of context to argue against vaccination.

The report has also noted accusations that the AVN harassed the parents of a child who died of whooping cough last year, after the parents advocated the importance of childhood vaccination.

The baby, Dana McCaffery, died at 32 days, too young to be vaccinated against whooping cough.

I’ve been following the whole vaccination debate pretty closely and I think there are a couple of pretty clear points that arise.

First. Whooping cough or pertussis is a bacterial infection that can kill very young children in a very horrible way.

Second. It can be prevented by a vaccine, freely available across Australia.

Third. Although children can be vaccinated at two months, the vaccine is not fully effective until the final round of vaccinations at four years old. For babies younger than six months, the danger is particularly acute.

Fourth. New parents can protect their child by receiving a pertussis booster, which will reduce the chance of passing the bacteria onto their child.

For parents to refuse to have their child vaccinated, as the AVN advocates, is the height of madness.

Those Germans, eh!

"I'm wearing an octopus hat and I'm really, really pissed. Espanol! Espanol! Espanol "

The World Cup is over for another XXX years* and I’m sure most people here have forgotten most of it already.

Indeed, the only thing anybody will ultimately remember is the amazing performance of Paul, the psychic octopus.

For those who arrived late, this amazing cephalopod mollusc has correctly managed to predict the outcomes of all the games played by Germany and that Spain would win the Cup for the first time EVAH!!

In the course of his career, Paul managed to piss off a great number of people, including most of Germany when he predicted (again, correctly) that Germany would lose to Spain and be knocked out of the competition.

The ABC notes

Stung by Paul's "treachery" at picking Spain over Germany in last Wednesday's semi-final, some sections of the 350,000-strong crowd watching the game on giant screens in Berlin sang anti-octopus songs.

What. The. Fuck?

What sort of freak writes “anti-octopus songs”?

In German!

The PETA people have also tried to get into the action by putting out a media release demanding something, something but they can fuck right off.

* As you may have guessed, I’m a hit hazy about the details.

Get drunk. Look at Moss.

God, it's hard being a poet

Long lines sent to Lin Hu-Ch'u before he comes to visit my tumbledown home

by Po Chü-I (772-846 AD)

No esteem for the stately caps and carriages of consequence,
in love with woods and streams, I go out and doze, perhaps,

drunk beside the pond. I’ve stopped trying to save the world,
just wander herb paths, keep my little fishing boat swept out.

Serving the poetry master with writing-brush and inkstone,
I’m steadied by music and my friend, the immortality in wine,

but for lofty sentiments, I stay close to things themselves:
green moss, rock bamboo-shoots, water lilies in white bloom.

A piss-weak paraody of a potential Perseus post.

I was sitting in the kitchen of stately Perseus Manor, around nine in the morning.

I was just stubbing out my 137th cigarette of the day when there was a knock at the door.

It was my latest love-interest, Miss Flotilla.

“Perseus,” she said, “I’ve arrived in your quaint seaside village for the weekend. I’ve brought a small truck load of illegal pharmaceuticals and some red wine – but there will be no sex.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “come in and we’ll drink far too much coffee.”

Later that day we were drinking coffee at a cafe, discussing Foucault, when I was distracted by a conversation at the table next door. Some hippie was talking too loudly with her hippie friend about the healing powers of rainbows.

“Shut it hippie,” I snarled, “your suppositions are founded on nonsense, God does not exist and you stink of cheap incense.”

Later that night, there was a big party at my place.

Ponygirl’s brother, Ponybloke, was there, as was Feralgirl, Nuisancechick, GothGothGothGirl and some weirdo called “Bess”.

We all drank too much red wine and took too many drugs.

GothGothGothGirl and Bess ended up shagging in my bed.

I had no sex.

The end.

Gutted!

A weeping Lindsay Lohan being comforted after hearing the terrible news about Senator Faulkner.

In a move that has hit me hard, Senator John Faulkner, the current Minister for Defence, lefty and dancin’ fool, has announced he will move to the backbench after the Federal election.

Coming after Lindsey Tanner announced that he will not re-contest his seat of Melbourne*; this removes two of Labor’s finest thinkers from any possible Cabinet line-up.

I can only hope that Comrade Faulkner will return to play a leading role in any future Gillard Government.

* Which the Greens will not win**.

** So there. Nyerr.

Oh God, this again!

It was with a sinking feeling that I heard Prime Minister Gillard has called for a debate on Australia’s policy on asylum seekers and border protection.

I say this because a debate would be fine, a debate would be peachy, a debate is what civilised societies do. What we’ll get in Australia is the usual knuckle-heads shrieking abuse at anybody who disagrees with them.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young opines

“Julia Gillard is sending signals ... that she's prepared to chase Tony Abbott down that low road of Howard-style politics where children were detained behind bars ... and where vulnerable people were demonised”

Well done Senator, you’ve managed to drag in the expression “Howard-style politics” without explaining how exactly this is relevant or what “Howard-style politics” even means. You’re a credit to the upper house.

In this, we’re assisted by a media that are obsessed with who “won” or “lost” rather than working through what it means.

This issue involves international law, organised crime, “push factors” and legitimate issues around border protection. I don’t have an instant answer. I suspect there are no instant answers, but could we have a debate based on the facts and a smattering of logic?

Could we fuck!

What rhymes with "Gillard"?

"Vote for Julia, or I'll bite you!"

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.